LVMH Prize finalists Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø of All-In are leaning into multitasking. Having recently published a folio of backstage looks from their spring Uptown Girl show (which referenced the 1988 movie), the duo moved into a new light-filled work space, which is where the designers (who shows once a year) did a walkthrough of their first ever fall collection. Conceived as a sequel to last season, it was titled Downtown Girl with a melancholy feeling of autumn. Accordingly, the colors were more muted, but an All-In collection without a dash of bubblegum pink is unimaginable, and the lookbook opens and closes with it. The final look was a delicious ’80s-inspired confection with ruffles, insets of lace and a lavish pussy-cat bow paired with fierce studded black-leather thigh-high boots. This was but one variant of the Level style with which the brand has cornered the cool-girl shoe market.
In contrast to the OTT closer, the opening look, a single pullover that presented as three, showed how All-In’s approach to design can be translated into approachable pieces without feeling watered down. The more daring consumer might go for the brand’s first outerwear design, a triple parka in army green with fur trim. More familiar were the twisted, upcycled T-shirt tops suspended from a strand of gum-ball-sized pearls. Here, fall’s popular peplum took the form of a tulle-lined mini layered over pants. The corpcore trend was worked through button-down shirts and sweaters with shoulder pads Tess McGill would have loved.
What stood out, in all ways, were the brand’s signature “display” pieces, a skirt that looked like it was wearing a skirt, and most dramatically (look four) a triple shirt that seemed to be magnetically attached to the front of the model’s body. This is not something that Barron and Vestbø created (designers including Olivier Theyskens and Jean Paul Gaultier have used the technique) but they convincingly made it their own, not through the camp aspect of their practice, but through their deep understanding of, and appreciation for, the way people construct a look, and by extension a self.
What’s really interesting is that these “display” pieces, with their layers, are a sort of visual representation of the brand’s multimedia practice. Barron had started All-In as a magazine in 2015, before he met Vestbø. In 2019 they extended their storytelling to fashion and accessories via a collaboration with Maryam Nassir Zadeh, who put versions of their upcycled fantasy shoes into production. Lotta Volkova, a client and their stylist, modeled for the designers’ spring 2022 presentation.
All-In collections are built around characters; the (fading) star of the spring 2024 collection was Allina (a play on the brand name) a pop singer. The brand teamed up with Smerz, a Norwegian electronic duo, who created the music that was released as an EP under the name Allina, thus managing to subvert the fourth wall. Another way the brand is pushing forward is by showing some of the fall collection on a hyper-masculine male model, in part because Vestbø and Barron are interested in wearing their own clothes. Full of surprises and fun, All-In is one of the tiny but mighty independent brands that are forging a new and uncompromising way forward in fashion.
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